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Top choice in Aliados & Bolhão
Ostensibly a bookshop, but even if you’re not after books, don’t miss this exquisite 1906 neo-Gothic confection, with its lavishly carved plaster resembling wood and a stained-glass skylight. Feels magical? Its intricately wrought, curiously twisting staircase was supposedly the inspiration for the one in the Harry Potter books, which JK Rowling partly wrote in Porto while working here as an English teacher from 1991 to 1993.
The €5 entry is redeemable if you buy a book.
0.41 MILES
Igreja de São Francisco looks from the outside to be an austerely Gothic church, but inside it hides one of Portugal’s most dazzling displays of baroque…
2.49 MILES
This fabulous cultural institution combines a museum, a mansion and extensive gardens. Cutting-edge exhibitions, along with a fine permanent collection…
0.33 MILES
From Praça da Ribeira rises a tangle of medieval alleys and stairways that eventually reach the hulking, hilltop fortress of the cathedral. Founded in the…
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis
0.35 MILES
Porto's best art museum presents a stellar collection ranging from Neolithic carvings to Portugal’s take on modernism, all housed in the formidable…
0.38 MILES
This splendid neoclassical monument (built from 1842 to 1910) honours Porto’s past and present money merchants. Just past the entrance is the glass-domed…
0.57 MILES
Sitting atop a bluff, this gorgeous botanical garden is one of Porto's best-loved escapes, with lawns interwoven with sun-dappled paths and dotted with…
1.18 MILES
At once minimalist, iconic and daringly imaginative, the Casa da Música is the beating heart of Porto's cultural scene and the home of the Porto National…
0.24 MILES
One of the world's most beautiful train stations, beaux arts São Bento wings you back to a more graceful age of rail travel. Completed in 1903, it seems…
0.07 MILES
Nicolau Nasoni designed the Igreja dos Clérigos, with its theatrical facade and unusual, oval-shaped nave, resembling a Fabergé egg due to its dusky pink…
0.07 MILES
Sticking out on Porto's skyline like a sore thumb – albeit a beautiful baroque one – this 76m-high tower was designed by Italian-born baroque master…
0.1 MILES
Blink and you might miss that this is a church in its own right, snuggled as close as it is to the Igreja do Carmo. The twin churches are separated only…
0.1 MILES
Dating to the late 18th century, this captivating azulejo-covered church is one of Porto’s best examples of rococo architecture. The tiled panel on the…
0.13 MILES
This pleasantly leafy park is known simply as ‘Cordoaria’. Check out the four haunting sculptures by Spain's Juan Muñoz. The romantic, narrow lanes that…
6. Rua de São Bento da Vitória
0.13 MILES
With its cobblestones polished smooth by centuries of shoe leather, and pretty tiled houses with little wrought-iron balconies and window boxes brimming…
7. Centro Português de Fotografia
0.16 MILES
This stately yet muscular building (1767) once served as a prison and now houses a photography museum. You actually walk through the thick iron gates and…
0.19 MILES
Lined with bulging, beaux arts facades and capped by the stately câmara municipal (municipal council), this avenida recalls grand Parisian imitators such…